“Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances; sometimes it’s now or never.”

–

Alan Bennett

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Life is tricky. While there often seems to be unending line of second chances standing outside your door sometimes … well … you look outside one morning and they have all gone to have a scone at starbucks. Gone. All the second chances gone. And you are alone.

This is “now” and you can’t play the ‘next time’ card or ask the next second chance to come on in. You can’t say “uhm … can you wait a minute?” <until one of the second chances comes back from the bathroom>.

Nope.

Its now or never.

And this gets even trickier because while I suggested a line of second chances typically hangs out outside your door — they don’t really stand around. You just kind of envision, and hope, they are hanging around.

What that means is this is a judgment call on your part.

Now. If it helps the anxiety wracking your body at the moment, the odds are with you. Life DOES give you a shitload of second chances and timeouts and next times. Probably more than you could ever use in a lifetime as a matter of fact.

But that’s not the point.

This is about the moment when the odds say “oops … none of them available.” It says “now or never”. Life walks right on up to you and says … ‘what’s your call?’

I would note that recognizing this moment is actually a judgment call – judgement as in actually recognizing all the second chances are gone and ‘this is it.’ Yup. Life doesn’t say (in an aside whisper) … “Hey, just so you know, this is one of those no time out, no second chance, no next time moments.”

(sorry about that)

You just gotta know. I guess the point of this is to remind everyone that while Life is extremely generous in giving time outs and second chances, there are going to be now or never moments.

And you have to be prepared for them.

And do your best to recognize them.

And make a call.

Oh. And, I imagine, it is also important to recognize afterwards, if you fucked up and didn’t see it, that it was a ‘now or never’ moment. That is important because … well … you cannot undo or go back or ask for a second chance. Yup. There is no going back, or undoing, or even a glimpse of a ‘do-over.’ Because, well, it was a now or never moment.

It is done with you and you are done with it.

It is gone.

Move on.

Don’t beat yourself up (wasted energy).

Don’t try and fix it.

Live & learn.

It sucks but, trust me, more often than not you will get another ‘now or never’ opportunity again one day <whether you want it or not>

And … at that moment … remember … “sometimes there is no next time” because it pays to recognize one of these moments when they arise. It pays because, uhm, now or never moments tend to matter.

At some point in our lives pretty much all of us have had a little bit of ‘I want to save the world’in us. Of course, that was before the world & Life beat it out of us and suggested that maybe we aim a little lower.

Ok.

A lot lower.

Well. The world, and Life, was, and is, wrong. This is one of those things we should never have beaten out of us.

Let me repeat.

NEVER let it get beaten out of you.

Let me tell you why this may be one of the most important things we should pay attention to.

There is no lack of problems in today’s world.

There is no lack of people who need saving.

There is no lack of ideas that need saving.

And let’s be clear … you do not need an “everything is fucked and we’re all going to die” attitude to see this.

It just is.

Its quite possible when you do ponder this it may appear easier to just say “I need to focus on my own happiness” .

Well. Research has shown over and over again that our true happiness and self worth is attained when we aspire to being dynamic beyond our own purpose <be part of something bigger than just ‘me’>. Our happiness is actually more like ‘meaningfulness’ and meaningfulness is most likely achieved when our purpose isn’t about us (self), but rather investing energy in just making things better. There are a number of people who I highly recommend (Zach Mercurio, Perry Timms, Gustavo Razzetti, Dr. Jason Fox) who will speak to this thought with research and psychological underpinnings.

I take a simple approach to the topic.

Here is a Life truth.

Life can suck if you let it.

And things will always remain sucky if you let it.

You can either do something or not do something. And you can do some important things or you can do unimportant things.

That’s the gig. Simple as that.

But here is what I can tell you for sure. Doing something … and doing important things … gives meaning & purpose and all that Maslow stuff which makes you feel self-value. In other words, in a world that may suck or at least may appear to suck <and has some obvious sucky things about it>, if you choose to try and save the world in some way you will not suck.

You don’t have to save the world all at once. You can start saving small … a penny at a time. All you gotta do is choose any frickin’ penny you see lying on the ground <that’s a bad metaphor for ‘some issue’ by the way>.

Just pick a problem and start saving the world one penny at a time. Before you know it you will have made a dollar difference … and maybe more if you are really lucky.

There are so many to choose from you cannot go wrong in saving the world … you can start saving at any time in fact.

Will you solve it? Most likely not.

Will you contribute to the solution? Most likely yes.

Most importantly … will you make a difference? Yes.

Like small pebbles dropped in a pond the ripple reaches much much farther than you can see from where you stand.

And you know what?

You will feel better about yourself. Even if you are only one penny richer at the end of the day … well … you are richer.

So, maybe, rather than falling in love with yourself or investing in ‘being resent’ or even actively seeking to make yourself happy, you might do well to get to work on solving the problems that prevent the world from being truly exceptional. You become richer by making the world around you a richer place to live.

By the way.

If along the way you are the only person you save … well … you have done good, kid.

“At the end of the day, we have to value ourselves as more than just an image.

An image is just an image. If you want more, look deeper within.

Are you a good friend? A kind companion? How do you treat others?

Those are the things that are a better definition of beauty.’

—-

Sara Ramirez

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I imagine all of us want to be seen by everyone as ‘something.’ In my mind this ‘something’ isn’t fame or some high falutin’ title or even being rich, instead, its to be recognized characteristically as something. This is not something shallow, but something a little deeper that defines you. Yes. I think we all want, in some degree, to be recognized for character, not some material or tangible thing.

That said. This means, in reality, driving toward that ‘something’ is incredibly fairly innocuous & incredibly difficult to define in a way everyone knows what good is and what bad is. The ‘something’ will vary from person to person meaning a shitload of us want to be seen as smart, or well rounded, or beautiful, or funny, or … well … pick your personal poison.

I could suggest that is kind of a shallow something.

Okay.

I will.

That is a shallow ‘something.’

And what makes that shallow worse is that by making that a fairly significant portion of how we choose to define ourselves we spend an inordinate amount of time & energy planning for ‘someday’ when that ‘something’ is played back to us as our defining characteristic.

Uhm.

Well.

If you are not careful … someday stealthily sneaks up on you as ‘today … and then yesterday … and then day by day it just becomes your Life.

Unfortunately Life is not just an image.

Unfortunately Life is ultimately not that shallow.

Unfortunately you have to leave the shallow end of the pool at some point and venture into the deep end in order to find … well … value.

Despite what marketing & advertising & branding folk may suggest, image is not everything and image does not equal any meaningful value.

Despite what Instagram suggests, image is not everything and image does not equal any meaningful value.

This doesn’t mean it isn’t tempting nor does it mean society doesn’t spend an inordinate amount of energy trying to convince you image matters.

But the truth is image without substance is simply a façade … a mask.

I can unequivocally state that the number of people who can maintain an entire life behind a mask is minuscule. It is extremely difficult to maintain that façade for an entire Life. It is like trying to play out an act … forever. Someone can do it for a while and fewer can figure out how to build the trappings which can hold the act together, but to hold all of that together for a Lifetime takes some luck, some clever skills, some bravado to appease the cynics & skeptics and, ultimately, some ability to keep the lack of substance out of the spotlight & questioning.

Suffice it to say … it takes a lot of work to wear a mask an entire Life.

And maybe that is my larger point.

We all want to eventually be seen as ‘something.’ And we all would prefer that something be of value to those who recognize it and of value to our self-worth.

That means.

If you are not careful you can spend a significant portion of your Life chasing some definition, some ‘something’ you are recognized by — that has little or no real value to oneself.

By the way. I am not suggesting this is easy. Society encourages shallowness. It can do so in a variety of ways but the main way is simple – measurement.

The shallowest ‘somethings’ are easy to see, easy to assess and easy to measure versus either society standards or versus others. Likes, followers, being labeled an ‘influencer’ or, heck, even earning some ‘label’ which could be construed as approval are all measurements which make the shallow aspects of Life more tangible.

The deepest ‘somethings’ – good, soul, character, integrity … shit like that — are difficult to measure and, frankly, the definition is earned over time and with consistent behavior. You cannot expect instant gratification, at least external gratification, if you pursue a ‘deeper something.’ In other words, you are less likley to gain the visible rwards in as large a quanitty versus pursiing more shallow value.

Sigh.

Well. Here is what I know:

“At the end of the day, we have to value ourselves as more than just an image.

An image is just an image. If you want more, look deeper within.

Image is just an image.

How about this.

Image is like masturbation.

A deeper something is like making love.

I tend to believe we all want more.

We all want that kind of self-value that is deeper.

We all want more than just an image.

….. impact of Warehouse of Images (before Instagram existed) …..

It is a Life truth that Image is seductive. And, in fact, this is where technology has made Life more difficult. As Alvin Toffler pointed out in Future Shock before the internet our visual comparisons were limited by the sphere of physical contact with external interspersed creating a semi-controlled universe of ‘standards.’ With the advent of the internet Toffler warned us the sphere would increase exponentially which would be additional psychological pressures upon people they had not faced before. I would argue he was prescient and much of the social pressure young people feel today is driven by a larger universe in Instagram, Facebook, etc. of unrealistic comparisons.

The good news? Shallow pursuit of personal value is, well, shallow. And most of us, given the opportunity to pursue a deeper more meaningful value will choose that path.

We find that path attractive because, well, it is a Life truth that if you want more than image, and look deeper within for that ‘something’, you will find a better definition of yourself.

“It’s surprising how many persons go through life without ever recognizing that their feelings toward other people are largely determined by their feelings toward themselves, and if you’re not comfortable within yourself, you can’t be comfortable with others.”

—

Sydney J. Harris

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There is neither a right nor a wrong way of reflective thinking, there are just questions to explore.

Reflective thinking process starts with you. Before you can begin to assess the words and ideas of others, you need to pause and identify and examine your own thoughts.

Doing this involves revisiting your prior experience and knowledge of the topic you are exploring. It also involves considering how and why you think the way you do.

The examination of your beliefs, values, attitudes and assumptions forms the foundation of your understanding.

Reflective thinking demands that you recognise that you bring valuable knowledge to every experience. It helps you therefore to recognise and clarify the important connections between what you already know and what you are learning. It is a way of helping you to become an active, aware and critical learner.

—–

UNSW Australia

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Well. I have written dozens of posts with regard to self esteem and being yourself and, yet, this quote made me sit back and think a little more about the importance of how you view yourself.

When I started writing this thought I am sharing and titled this post I didn’t realize there was actually something called ‘reflective thinking.’ To be clear, today’s thought from me is just that – a thought – and if you want to read up on reflective thinking and research and stuff like that go for it. In general I tend to believe all of us would be a little better off if we actively were aware of the ‘reflective thinking principles’ as we wandered our way thru Life.

Regardless. My thoughts.

By the way … this thought is also very <very> relatable to business in that how a business, and its organization/employees, feels toward themselves impacts their feelings toward other people <target audience, customers, competitors, etc.>.

Anyway. Life, us, and what is in our heads.

Very <most> often we think about ‘what do others think about’ or ‘how people view such and such’ and don’t stop and think about “why do I care?”

We should. What you care about with regard to yourself impacts what you care about externally.

It creates expectations, desires, attitudes and even your behavior.

The danger in ‘non reflective thinking’ is multi dimensional, but the main danger is that means you view the world through a focus group of one – yourself. And that means you view the world thru a lens of what you feel comfortable with about yourself as well as what you feel less comfortable with. It filters the view positively and negatively. Regardless. It creates a filter.

Worse?

That filter is always being adjusted by self doubt, how you deal with doubt & uncertainty, and what is happening to you day in and day out.

Whoa.

Hold on.

There are a bunch of confident people shouting “I have no self doubt !!! … I know what I am comfortable with and I am comfortable in my own skin !!!!”

Well. In all the exclamation points I would suggest ‘you doth protest too much.’ Confident or not we all doubt ourselves sometimes and we all certainly question ourselves at all times. By the way. There is nothing wrong with that. It is natural.

However, we should reflect upon the fact that natural human activity affects how we view everyone and everything else around us. It makes us comfortable and uncomfortable with things and people in an uneven way. Or maybe in a less than desirable inconsistency which can not only confuse other people <this is our inconsistent filter where even if it is just a minor inconsistency, it can create a more major judgement impact> it can actually confuse us.

Yes. Be aware. We like consistency within ourselves it kind of proves to ourselves that we have our shit together.

This becomes confusing in reflection because, on the other hand, If you think about it … you sometimes celebrate the inconsistency as ‘an ability to not treat everyone the same’ and it suggests that we can adapt to new and different experiences.

Well. Most times we are wrong in that thought. We are fairly consistent. The reality is your own filter has most likely varied because of something that has nothing to do with them or the experience but rather something that has affected your own filter PRIOR to that experience.

Even worse?

Your filter could be affected by how <insert an “uh oh” here> … uhm … you feel about yourself that day and in that moment.

<yikes>

In the end.

I don’t think we like to admit this to ourselves: the fact that how we view ourselves taints how we view others.

Shit.

I am not sure most of us even recognize it. We far more often reflect upon ourselves as a way of thinking about how to improve ourselves or maybe reflect upon ‘I is what I is.’ Nothing wrong with that <in a balanced way>.

Self awareness is good. What is even better is to be aware that what you learn is reflected in how you view others … and at its worst … how you judge others. Your personal comfort, or discomfort, affects your comfort or discomfort in others.

If you recognize this maybe you will be a little more appreciative of others in ways you have never imagined.

Shit. If you recognize this maybe you will gain some valuable insight into yourself.

Every year around “Black Friday” I get asked about the value of marketing in a capitalistic society. Here is my view on whether Marketing is evil (or ethical versus unethical). Vilhjamur (from the quote) was a kick ass anthropologist (known for his description of the “Blond Eskimo” which is a Copper Inuit), his discovery of new lands in the Arctic, his approach to travel and exploration, and his theories of health and diet. I am not sure what the hell he knew about advertising, but he did say the quote I used.

I believe marketing people generally fall into three buckets.

1. Those who fabricate unimportant truths and tell you that they are important <these people are hacks and should be fired and told to pick up trash on the sides of highways>

2. Those who use existing unimportant truths and convince you that they are important <this is the largest group and will vary on a spectrum between those who do this knowingly – which puts them close to the highway garbage category – and those who are blissfully ignorant of what they are doing>

3. Those who take important truths and tell you that they are important <scarily this group may have the toughest job because we people are consistently uninterested in many important truths>

It would be nice to suggest this is a simple 1 to 3 scale or, at minimum, a one to 5 scale, but I believe someone could quite successfully argue this three group scoring would be a 1 to 10 scale with lots of broad interpretation and lots of caveats & excuses. Before any marketing person starts blathering about with caveats & excuses please make sure you read Bill Bernbach’s “Do this or Die” advertisement he wrote to advertising & marketing people (see marketing is evil part 2).

All that said I empathize with people who suggest marketing is evil (evil being a broader term for “convincing people to buy shit they don’t really need or want to buy before they saw the marketing”).

I empathize because if I were to do some scoring I believe I would tend to see a lot of 4’s and 5’s.

I empathize because I just don’t see a lot of marketing that seems to approach selling stuff from a “what is in the best interest of the people” perspective.

Look. I am all for capitalism and selling stuff, but a lot of marketing seems to lack a deeper moral/ethical substance. Not all, but some <a lot>. What makes it even more difficult to defend and discuss is that it is really difficult to put your finger on the core issue/rot/compromise that seems to creep into the internal moral compass one would hope marketers would have.

Why? Because of what I called ‘unimportant truths versus important truths.’ Both of which are truths just with some interpretation issues thrown in to make it all fuzzy.

About marketing truths

A beginning thought:

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“Record companies are in the marketing business. Fashion probably wasn’t evil before marketing people got involved and tried to invent themselves and sell it to America’s youth by convincing them that the rest of America’s youth was already partaking. Fashion probably began as a groundswell of beauty: the tribe enjoying the way the buildings look and music sounds, right now, in this moment. That’s valuable because it allows for substance to shift styles. But marketing will do anything to avoid substance and engage only in style. No longer beauty that falls from trees like apples, fashion becomes shiny, scary chemical candy, unnatural and unhealthy.”

Kristen Hersh

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Ok. There are so many great thoughts within it … well … it is scary.

‘fashion probably began as a groundswell of beauty.”

Think about this one. This is a big thought, much bigger than just about the fashion industry, & relevant to all of marketing. This whole thought revolves around substance versus style as the issue. It suggests marketing has no substance … hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm … or, maybe better said, it thrives less on substance than style. Here is the bigger thought hidden in there … “valuable because it allows for substance to shift styles.”

So. Substance creates beauty all on its own and marketing creates style to showcase that which may, or may not, have substance. Or, as earlier noted, maybe marketing becomes dependent upon unimportant truths.

Oh, even worse, “created truths” (a creative way of saying ‘lies’).

Ok. Does this alone make marketing evil? No. Ok, well, not all the time.

Because the key is substance and the truths that reside within.

Marketing has a habit of “creating truths.” Yeah … yeah .. yeah … someone is gonna come back and suggest “no, we aren’t creating truths, we are simply uncovering truths.”

Semantics.

Marketing is in the business of tearing apart the fabric of thought and identifying specific threads within the fabric that may be worth pointing out to people. In the end? It is a thread. And not the fabric.

An example?

“Stores Create More Holidays; Tissues Made for Summer, Pink Irons for Fall”

(Wall Street Journal in august 2011)

People see 4 seasons (unless you live in California or the North Pole) but retailers see anywhere from 13 to 20 seasons. All designed to get shoppers into their stores and buy stuff.

The fabric? The season. The threads? The 13 to 20 “seasons” retailers see.

Once again, is this evil, or lying, or even “unimportant truths”? This is a really really gray area. Creating more holidays. They are creating more sales, but inevitably they are just trying to create more interest. They do all of this because retailers want impulse purchases (oh, by the way, which naturally happen to any of us … and marketing doesn’t create this … you <your own head> creates this).

Anyway. Suffice it to say what they do is try to get you in the store more often because the more often you visit the more likely you are to buy stuff. Marketing does all of this quite thoughtfully.

So. Research says the average retail shopper visits a store once every two to three weeks. And shoppers go to the grocery store every seven to 10 days. That means traditional retailers added grocery items hoping to make people make more frequent shopping trips.

Do I begrudge retailers this? Nope. They have a business to run. And by being so “thoughtful” are they evil <in their quasi-manipulation of us shopping folk>? Nope.

And are they lying? Nope.

Let’s tear apart the fabric a little more.

In other words, let me try and and help you understand why there are a boatload of people out there who say marketing is evil. Because this next example really starts talking about “unimportant truths” and, in the end, we are talking about some sense of mental manipulation.

Let’s look how they do it to see if its lying or evil. Let’s look at a retailer’s 4, oops, 13 season year:

– Superbowl

– New Year’s Resolutions (January)

– Lawn and Garden (April)

– Back to School/College(July through August)

– Gifts for children; early entertaining décor (October, November)

– Last-minute gifts, stocking stuffers, food/entertaining (December)

– Health and Wellness January features exercise equipment, supplements and vitamins, items tied to shoppers’ New Year’s resolutions

– Holiday Entertaining and Gifting (November, begins the day after black Friday)

– Organization and Storage(January)

(and I am sure I missed a couple in there as well as I probably got some of the dates wrong, but, you get the point)

Why do they do this? Research shows that people are usually willing to spend more during “special seasons” and even more dollars if they are spending on their children.

Look. I don’t believe marketing is evil, but it is surely “wily smart” in that it is always seeking to find conscious or subconscious triggers to motivate behavior to encourage people to consume things.

But. Here is a truth. Impulse or not, marketing cannot really make someone do something they don’t want to do. I would also point out in today’s world with return guarantees, free return shipping, etc., it is almost next to impossible to maintain what could be construed as impulsive behavior decision (because it can so easily be “undone”).

Marketing is a business. You can certainly expect a retailer, and marketers, to make shopping as much of a science as possible. By “science” I mean by often “managing unimportant truths.” In addition, they will build model stores, displays and end-caps (things at the end of the aisles) to see what makes people buy the most.

Once again, is that evil? Nope. It’s just being smart about your business.

In general I don’t think marketing is the embodiment of the Evil Empire. I think most Marketing people just try to do the best job they can to sell things they represent.

Now. “The best” can be pretty bad at times.

Simplistically. Bad marketing is bad. And ignorance, or doing what you believe is the right thing to do, is no excuse for bad marketing or making the unimportant important. Good marketing sells substance or (still good) expresses the existing emotional relationships people have with products.

On marketing’s good days it ultimately helps the best companies and products win over the bad stuff.

On marketing’s BEST days they actually get people to believe the important truths.

Next.

Evil: confusing evil messaging and evil actions

I brought up the unimportant versus important truths upfront because I believe marketing‘s evilness really should be defined by that. But. issues gets compounded not just by what they say, but also by how and when they say it.

So beyond the message we shouldn’t get confused by marketer’s actions (which are mostly not evil, just absurdly annoying – which I imagine could be construed as some level of evilness). I do wish more marketers would pay attention to information available to them. According to Pitney Bowes research, consumers surveyed in France, Germany, the UK and the U.S. have indicated which marketing activities draw them closer and which act as a repellent. If marketers would pay attention, people are quite clear about what they want from marketing interactions. If marketers would pay attention they would clearly see many of their actions are simply not having the intended effect. Worse, inappropriate communications often diminish a brand’s attractiveness, thereby losing people’s interest and ultimately even existing customers opt out.

So. The good things? Customer satisfaction surveys. 75% were fine with them. Great opportunity for marketers to “not sell” but rather learn and create customized messaging/experiences based on each consumer’s preferences.

“This survey confirms that brands should listen to consumers before they send out their communications. Every interaction must honor the interests of the customer first, only then is a relevant offer or call to action acceptable to consumers. Each conversation between a brand and a customer is an opportunity to delight or disappoint. We’re all learning how to do more of the former and less of the latter.”

PitneyBowes Reasearch

On websites, 59% say they appreciate personalization such as “Welcome <name>.” For transactional sites, especially where purchases are being made, it can be reassuring to know that the site recognizes your personal account details and has a record of interactions to draw upon <note: ‘personalization’ is being discussed in some fairly absurd creepy ways these days>.

Okay. Now the annoying stuff. And where marketing, I believe, just doesn’t help itself. Efforts which are meant to be inviting but are just plain irritating to most consumers.

– Asking customers to support a brand’s charity or ethical concerns (84%)

– Sending offers from third-parties (83%)

– Encouraging interaction with other consumers via an online community (81%).

Is this stuff evil? Of course not. But if you add these actions on top of the fact a marketer is most likely communicating an “unimportant truth” it is not only annoying but it is irrelevant. You have been intrusive and unimportant.

The double kiss of death.

Anyway.

Evil is always associated with people.

Truth or lie.

Annoying actions or relevant actions.

It all comes down to who is pulling the trigger. Here is where marketing runs into its most trouble: marketing people. Ok. Maybe it’s not the people , it’s just their common sense decision-making that seems to run into trouble. All too often it seems the marketing people manage to run into troubling ethical dilemmas and inevitably make some really bad, or certainly questionable, choices (with a consumer’s perspective in mind).

Most of the time these bad choices consist of less than the entire truth … or full disclosure of information the customer would want to know to make a reasonable decision. Let’s call this “selective truth telling.” Or, as earlier pointed out, selecting one thread in the fabric to point out. Or even “trying to convince you an unimportant truth is … well … important.” And, at its worst? Trying to convince you an unimportant truth is REALLY important. This is probably the best example of “the lie of silence” (which I have written about before). It’s all very tricky because most products & services tend to be good, useful products. And the ethical dilemma is how much information is it okay to hide <not tell> from the buyer to make a sale.

Oh. Silence. Omission. This is where many marketers will hide behind the excuse “but we only have so much time to capture someone’s attention.”

Shame on those marketers. You always have time to tell the important truth. And, in your heart of hearts, a good marketer knows that honesty and important truths win in the long run.

In the end, I do believe the thought of marketing as evil (in a true sense) is absurd. In an abstract sense (like Kristen mentions in her quote I used)? Well. Possibly. Evil is a strong word. It could be truly that marketing, when gone awry, can warp the true essence of the intent. And that may seem evil, but it is just wrong.

However.

Evil or not.

As a marketer myself, I would like to remind all marketers we have a responsibility. What we say and what we do DOES impact what people think and ultimately can affect what they do. With that ‘power’ comes a responsibility.

And it would be evil, yes, evil for us to forget that.

Black Friday seems to bring out the worst in marketing. Maybe it is because on that one day, above all, Marketing people forget their greater responsibility in their pursuit of a business responsibility – sell shit. And maybe that is where I should end. Its not about evil or good, or ethical versus unethical, its about not being a shit while selling shit. Period.

Well. Selective attention. Filter bubbles. Adaptive ignorance.Search images. All of these phrases are relevant to viewing life with eyes wide open. Really seeing what you see. Because there is seeing … and … well … there is seeing. With so many distractions <objects & views & sensory things> and people <gestures & emotions & behavior>, do we really see them? And, frankly, can we see them all?

Too often we don’t.

In our rush to get from point a to point b, getting kids out the door for whatever they need to get out the door for and, well, you fill in the excuse for how we look at a lot of shit going on in our lives, the unfortunate truth is that we rarely ever see what is going on. And we certainly do not see everything we could, and possibly should, see.

Once again. Around us as well as in the people in front of us.

Yeah … yeah … yeah. We pay lip service to this. We say we care and pay attention and are observant, but we aren’t. To be fair. It isn’t easy to really see what’s going on around you with everything else you are thinking about and focusing on. And, no, this isn’t about distractions or technology or any of that crap. This is simply about the fact that Life can be a natural blur and the fact that we, as people, in general, suck at seeing what it is really going on around us — the world as well as the actual individual we may be interacting with.

In fact. We have science on our side as an excuse <for our suckedness on this issue>.

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“Attention is an intentional, unapologetic discriminator. It asks what is relevant right now, and gears us up to notice only that.”

cognitive scientist Alexandra Horowitz

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This thought really does impact how we spend our lives because it means we get geared up to notice only that which is relevant to us. And, frankly, we kind of suck at that too <discerning what is most relevant to us>. We tend to float past each other, and past life itself, cut off from the world by not only smartphones but a belief that what is going on around us is not the most relevant thing.

There is seeing and … well … seeing and there is a vast difference between the two. Frederick Franck in “Zen Seeing/Zen Drawing” argues:

“The glaring contrast between seeing and looking-at the world around us is immense; it is fateful. Everything in our society seems to conspire against our inborn human gift of seeing. We have become addicted to merely looking-at things and beings. The more we regress from seeing to looking at the world — through the ever-more-perfected machinery of viewfinders, TV tubes, VCRs, microscopes, spectroscopes — the less we see. The less we see, the more numbed we become to the joy and the pain of being alive, and the further estranged we become from ourselves and all others.

Well. That is a discouraging thought. He is basically suggesting that once we get on the slippery slope of ‘not seeing’ we very quickly enter, and stay, in this miserable abyss of ‘non-observation’.

He may be right. But I would rather believe he is not. Seeing, really seeing, is a discriminating decision made by you. Not the world around you. You.

I say this because ‘seeing’ is simply about openness: open eyes, open mind, open heart … open to unapologetic attention.

This is about not really looking for something in particular just being ready and receptive to whatever happens around you and in front of you. And by not seeking anything in particular <because that inhibits true seeing> you end up, as someone wrote somewhere ‘… by your own eyes you will see, and there will be a conclusion.’

In other words … you don’t see based on your own ideas, but rather you see based on what you actually see.

Hey.

I am not suggesting this is easy. I am simply suggesting that you can do it if you elect to.

If it helps, we have evolution to blame on why I can say what I am saying to you:

…. evolution’s problem-solving left us modern humans with two kinds of attention: vigilance, which allows us to have a quick and life-saving fight-or-flight response to an immediate threat, be it a leaping lion or a deranged boss, and selective attention, which unconsciously curates the few stimuli to attend to amidst the flurry bombarding us, enabling us to block out everything except what we’re interested in ingesting. (Selective attention, of course, can mutate to dangerous degrees, producing such cultural atrocities as the filter bubble.)

Ah. The ‘filter bubble.’

the filter bubble

… by definition, it’s populated by the things that most compel you to click. But it’s also a real problem: the set of things we’re likely to click on (sex, gossip, things that are highly personally relevant) isn’t the same as the set of things we need to know.

Eli Pariser

Evolution and Life experience has created this filter bubble for each of us. And, by the way, each of our filter bubbles are different <because our Life experiences have been different in creating it>. But. This filter bubble idea also suggests that you can manage, if not actually change your filter bubble.

Yup. You can change the way you see things.

==

“To learn to see- to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides. This is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality. One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

==

I love that one thought … ‘allow things to come to it.’ Allow what you see to come to your eye … and ultinalety your mind.

Seeing is in the mind … not in the eyes. Mentally we need to stop focusing on a specific destination but rather watch during the journey.

===

“You reminded me of another traveler I knew who always wanted to get there, wherever there happened to be, and as a result missed what was all around him at the time.”

Sir Richard Burton author and traveler

===

Now. More research. Just to make everyone feel better … beyond evolution … there is a real reason we do this. It is called ‘adaptive ignorance.’

This is no excuse and the truth is ‘adaptive ignorance’ gets driven by an out of whack barometer of what is important to the individual, but at least there is a psychological reason:

This adaptive ignorance, she argues, is there for a reason — we celebrate it as “concentration” and welcome its way of easing our cognitive overload by allowing us to conserve our precious mental resources only for the stimuli of immediate and vital importance, and to dismiss or entirely miss all else. (“Attention is an intentional, unapologetic discriminator,” Horowitz tells us. “It asks what is relevant right now, and gears us up to notice only that.”) But while this might make us more efficient in our goal-oriented day-to-day, it also makes us inhabit a largely unlived — and unremembered — life, day in and day out.

Not only does Life make seeing difficult … our minds do. Our minds adapt more and more <which ultimately constrains seeing> by a couple of things:

– productivity <just getting shit done or out of the way or solved>

– the ways we learn to see the world.

All this adaptation <or I imagine we can call it ‘coping’> creates something researchers call ‘search images.’ These are things all of us employ when we need to narrow our attention in a goal-oriented task. Unfortunately, this is only helpful or even possible if we know what to look for. And that, my friends, is ultimately the point about seeing … and really seeing.

===

“… more is missed by not looking than not knowing.”

Thomas McCrae

===

We don’t see because we don’t look.

What a shame.

Because by not looking, really looking, we miss seeing some really valuable <important> things. In the end. I’ve provided a whole bunch of excuses for why we don’t really see things — real researched psychological reasons to hold on to if you want. But I would suggest now that you know the psychological reasons you are now aware enough to, well, actually see what you should see, not what you want to see.

“Each one of us, then, should speak of his roads, his crossroads, his roadside benches; each one of us should make a surveyor’s map of his lost fields and meadows.

Thoreau said that he had a map of his fields engraved in his soul. And Jean Wahl once wrote … [“] The frothing of the hedges / I keep deep inside me [“] … Thus we cover the universe with drawings we have lived.”

—

Gaston Bachelard

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“You have to live a life to understand it. Tourists just pass through.”

—

Prince

====

Well. This is about Experiences and how each experience we have creates an imprint. In other words. Why experiencing things & experiences are important.

Let me give you a reason not only for living, but experiencing Life. And I don’t means “savoring Life” type trite bullshit. I mean experiencing what is going on around you and being aware, to participate in Life … and actually experience the realities of the here & now <and not divert your attention toward some imaginative “boy, I imagined something completely different than what is occurring”>. Nor am I going to hijack any of that nutjob Eckhardt Tolle’s “live in the now” nonsense.

All I will suggest is that each experience, especially when you pay some attention to it, etches something in us.

Think of it like acquiring a tattoo. If you do accept the tattoo metaphor <or is that an analogy?> it seems to me you should take some care with what gets engraved upon you.

Why care?

The fact is Life is in constant movement and it can become incredibly tiring trying to dance with it all day long. In addition, your dance partner, named either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, typically arrives without invitation. I would suggest more of us would be slightly more content if we didn’t focus on the fact our dance partner made us smile <lets assume that is “good”> or is a complete asshole <lets call that dance partner “bad”>, but instead focus on the dance itself.

That, my friends, is experiencing Life.

The steps, the movement, that path and arc of the dance and the fields upon which our feet are placed in their movement. Thoreau tells us ‘ he had the map of his fields engraved in his soul.’ That is because he not only walked them, but he saw and felt the steps as he placed them.

This is all about recognizing the value of being aware. And it is this perceptive appreciation of the time & place, past & present, permits us a healthy balance of reality and memory.

Even better?

This awareness actually permits us to embed the moments better in our heads. This isn’t to say we will remember it correctly <because psychologically we suck at correctly & accurately remembering things> but rather the moments themselves are engraved upon us.

To be clear. This ‘thing’ we embed is actually a reflection of the natural gap in our minds between the complexity of reality and our ability to experience the complexity. What I mean by that is we tend to view reality heuristically. Therefore we don’t truly see reality but rather a simplified translation. Unfortunately, this simplified version naturally builds in some blind spots.

Now. There is a whole bunch of psychological mumbo jumbo about ‘dimensions of recognition’ and ‘symbolic complementariness of the person’s first-hand life events/involvements’, but it is much easier for everyday schmucks like you and I to think of it in a linear fashion — any initial connective personal involvement in a moment begets some reflection <how it may relate to other moments> which inevitably creates some ongoing narrative in our head.

Aw. Forget all the psychological stuff. Simplistically, the map of our Life is engraved upon our minds (if not our soul) assuming we actually are aware enough to experience the map as we traverse it. That is why awareness matters — our universe deserves to be covered with our drawings.

I am fairly sure a lot of people will read this and be shaking their heads going “I have great memories … I could cover my universe with drawings, you aren’t telling me anything of value”.

And you may be right. Absolutely. You may be.

But I would suggest that most people would actually end up papering their universe with someone else’s drawings of their experience … like taping postcards on the wall of everywhere you have been. That is not covering your universe with drawings of what you have lived.

Those are simply superficial surface expressions of real actual experience.

Let me go back to my tattoo metaphor.

If I were to get a tattoo on my soul I imagine, at least me, I would not choose a tattoo of a postcard, but rather I would prefer choosing an expression of what I felt when I placed my feet where that postcard was. In other words, I don’t want my tattoo to be a tourist with Life, I want it to be an expression of how I lived it.

output (halo effect: success or measured productivity does beget a sense of meaning)

The foundation of all dimensions is traction. Traction in terms of senses & sensibility. What I mean by that is the more all senses are immersed (individually) in the tasks at hand AND these is a sensibility of being connected with a likeminded tribe (group) the more likely meaningfulness is attained.

That said. Every business should be thinking about connection, immersion and why it’s difficult for us to find the connection & immersion.

We begin with one word: traction. The world is increasingly noisy, increasingly task oriented with an increasing list of things to do within the same finite amount of time we have always had. All of this encourages us to skate along the superficial surface of things, i.e., never really gain any true traction.

Numb & disconnected.

Lack of traction inevitably creates a sense of numbness which translates into stress because of lack of connection. Many people attribute ‘numbness’ to senses being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of communications and interactions demanded upon us every day. To be clear. Ever since the ‘white collar job’ was created we have been stressed out by over communication and an inordinate pressure on efficiency.

Whether it was the stacks of paper <memos, point of views, letters, reports, presentations, phone messages to be returned, etc.> in the good ole days or today’s hundreds of emails appearing in your inbox our attention has always been challenged.

In 1955, the Hoover Commission peeked inside the files of three major corporations. It discovered, respectively, 34 thousand, 56 thousand, and 64 thousand documents and memos on file for each employee on the payroll.

Nor could the mushrooming informational needs of industrial societies be met in writing alone. Thus the telephone and telegraph were invented which increased the ever swelling communications load.

By 1960 Americans were placing some 256 million phone calls per day — over 93 billion a year – and even the most advanced telephone systems and networks in the world were often over loaded. All these were essentially systems for delivering messages from one sender to one receiver at a time.

What was next? The internet. Society developed a way to send mass messages and communications from one sender to many receivers simultaneously. (Toffler)

We will not get into how all of this creates distractions away from efficiency because it is well researched and well documented. What we do suggest is this overwhelming amount of communication bludgeoning us creates a numbness to specifics and has several repercussions:

A general sense of alienation and anxiety which characterizes the day-to-day existence of many people

Our goal here today isn’t to solve work meaningfulness only to establish the fact employees, for the most part of every working day, are numb.

Conclusion:

We would also suggest this numbness is partially driven by the fact it is difficult to find traction points for people to engage therefore they simply speed along doing things in a relatively superficial (in terms of depth of personal & tribe/group engagement).

Forced engagement.

Since the beginning of time, regardless of the actual # of things calling for our attention, all of us feel overwhelmed with the sheer amount of distractions and things clamoring for our attention moment to moment. Businesses recognize this and have always actively pursued ways to force deeper engagement:

Milestones

KPIs

To do lists

Time management

All are attempts to create some focus, moments of traction, so we can engage with the most important things. while most of these initiative were created with the overall intent to maximize efficient productivity the real intent was driven aby a business fear as employees skated the slippery surface of urgent irrelevant engagement employees would not immerse themselves in the most important things. It was Eisenhower who once said: ‘The most urgent decisions are rarely the most important ones’.

In fact. Most likely the most famous of the forced engagement tactics is US President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Eisenhower Matrix:

Deciphering the urgent from the non-urgent and the important from the unimportant is important because misreading any of these things may create haste at the wrong time and waste energy & focus all of which simply drives us deeper into numbness.

That said.

Mostly with good intentions businesses and Life coaches have gone through extensive efforts to create traction points and methodologies to force is to connect at the right times on the right things.

Unfortunately, most of these things do not engage with the senses but are rather simply achievement based tactics. Achievements create a false sense of immersion (how could we not have been successful if we hadn’t been fully engaged) as well as a false sense of being part of a tribe (these are mostly individual based tactics from which we derive “we” achievement accolades). False may sound harsh so let’s just say forced engagement does drive a deeper engagement, thru increased awareness, but not a particularly deep immersion engagement. In our minds this is hollow traction. All traction is focused on achievement not the efforts within what is invested to achieve.

People, and businesses, recognize Life & work often takes on aspects of ‘grind’ (doing), therefore, actively seek paths to being more connected with Life and more immersed in what is happening.

While multiple ideas exist to address this there are two basic paths:

“I” immersion – mindfulness

“we” immersion – corporate events

Mindfulness is inherently an “I” connection/immersion activity. The idea is to find ways to become more present in the now seeking to find traction points to engage in what can seem like a swirling chaos of blurred activity. Philosophically this traction is an attempt to find some vividness & distinction in what is just a gray blur mental world.

Corporate events (trade shows) are business solutions to “grind” acknowledgement. The idea is to find lily pads in the sea of everyday sameness to slow down and connect with your mind (exchange of ideas with people interested in the same things you are) and immersed in an experience which engages some deeper meaning than simply ‘doing.’

Conclusion:

Both of these paths offer positive benefits to people. Mindfulness encourages people to better engage in moments. Corporate events encourage people to understand they are not ‘in it’ alone and permit better connection with likeminded people. In and of themselves, they are quite useful in creating connection & immersion traction to self & tribes.

But there is another level.

Highest order of connection/immersion.

Eckhardt Tolle suggests this is living in the present. We partially agree. Most people understand you the business word and Life, pragmatically, does not permit someone to be wholly engaged in every single moment. It is mentally and physically exhausting and practically speaking, not the most efficient nor effective ay to get things done. However. Research shows that engaging in what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called “flow” moments do create overall lift in how you engage with Life.

Therefore there is a high value in seeking out ways to engage in the highest order of connection and immersion: moments in which All senses engaged + feel like part of a tribe (see: Inclusion not exclusion at work)

We could see something like a NASA space trip as the highest order of connected immersion: all senses are engaged and you are part of a smaller tribe of people (everyday person version of astronauts). Driving a high end car is similar: all senses are engaged and you are part of a smaller tribe of people (people who ‘get’ why that particular car experience cannot be substituted + everyday person version of professional drivers).

Conclusion: Immersion and connection Matters

We would argue seeking immersion and connection is vital to a fuller Life, but, pragmatically, being immersed & connected, even in discrete moments, reflects potential.

It creates a greater sense of “more you feel capable of actually doing something with meaning.” For a business this offers multiple rewards:

An employee, individually, finds a greater connection to life beyond simply ‘doing’

An employee who is engaged is more productive – efficiently & effectively

An employee who feels connected with a tribe is more open to collaboration, teamwork & more focused on greater good objectives than the more simplistic individual reward.

====

“People are energy sources to be activated, not depleted, to maximize businesses. We flippantly discuss jobs as mundane and boring which only makes the people doing them feel meaningless and mundane.”

Bruce McTague

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To be successful as an organization a business has to embrace, at least partially, what Gustavo Razzetti says “jobs are not functional.” Organizations ask employees to do things, but should be seeking to have them want to do things. Therefore, we believe it is incumbent for an employer to find traction experiences from which employees/workers can at least get a sense of deeper immersion and connection. To us, the grid we offered upfront is simply the connected/immersion version of the Eisenhower matrix. You should use our matrix to assess worker experiences always seek to find moments in which to offer a traction experience in the upper right hand quadrant.

Yes. Even a moment is important. Why?

===================

“The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

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If you do nothing, the mind will remain numb.

If you do company events like town halls & Friday fun days, the mind will relax but not really connect and definitely will not be immersed.

If you do send employees to Trade Shows or do create larger off-site corporate events, the mind engages with not only new ideas which stretch current thinking, the senses do engage to a certain level and the connection with some aspect of a tribe (likeminded people) creates a dimension of immersion about ‘numb’ but maybe not as high as fully immersed.

To be sure, the truth is you can’t send everyone up into space but you can send people to trade shows, you can have events at TopGolf and you can have events at places like the Porsche Driving Experience.

In the end.

We believe once a person connects with what it is like to be engaged and a business creates an environment for which those moments can be replicated, not only will employees be more engaged but productivity will increase.

This quote. I admit. It gave me pause when I saw it in a book I was reading. I stopped and reread it.

No one is innocent.

That means everyone carries some burden of ‘not innocent’. This seems relevant as more and more people in today’s society appear to investing a lot of energy suggesting they are guilty of little, if not anything.

Well. That is kind of bullshit. No one is innocent. We are all guilty of small, medium and even some large things.

Therefore. It within that last sentence of the opening quote in which resides the larger Life thought.

Your life can be defined by how you bear that guilt.

It is the larger Life thought because “defined by” is actually “choices”. All the choices we make everyday in the little and the small as well as in how we judge ourselves, and our actions, and other’s actions. So we make all of these choices, one by one, dozens & hundreds over time, all the while accumulating some, well, ‘non-innocence.’ From that point on it becomes how we define it:

Do you ignore it?

Do you make excuses?

Do you deny it?

Do you worry about it?

Do you keep it secret?

Do you use it to motivate?

These are questions that reside within each of us <whether we elect to admit that they exist or not>.

These are the questions that define how people bear the guilt.

Oh.

The one that is probably most important?

Do you even recognize you are not innocent?

Whew. Yeah. That is why I wrote this quote down.

I think in today’s world where we seem to rush to blame people and judge them guilty of something <often justly> we tend to push our own lack of innocence, in whatever degree it may exist, into some dusty corner of our mind. But I also believe there is an even more dangerous thing many people do … and that is justifying their own past behavior & actions as ‘not so bad’ … which is basically assuming … well … innocence.

What that means is, I imagine, there are many more people who don’t even know they are ‘not innocent’ of something than there are those who bear the guilt. I imagine this because, well, bearing some guilt is a burden. A burden not just as a weight but it also can bear some emotional erosion aspects if you are not careful.

While those who bear the guilt can sometimes be eaten away from the inside as they think about it I would suggest there are many more minds being eroded by the unseen, unrecognized & unaccepted shadow of guilt which dogs each step one takes.

This comes to Life in a variety of ways.

It erodes in a way that when shit happens to them <because the guilt actually affects their behavior in some seemingly small ways> they scratch their head and wonder why.

Some of these people think fate is against them.

Many of these people think Life isn’t fair.

Many of these people never look at themselves, or to themselves, as the issue … just everything else.

Many of these people just look at others as ones who should be guilty <“I never did anything that bad”>.

And all of that is sad to me. Mostly because their burden of guilt is most likely something manageable if they would only take the time to face it — face the guilt and eliminate that weightless, but diminishing, shadow following them and choose to carry it instead.

Look.

We all have guilt for something. None of us are innocent. The something could be big or it could be very small. But that is the funny thing about ‘not innocent’ … its size doesn’t matter.

Normal laws of space & weight do not apply to ‘not innocent’. A sliver of ‘not innocent’ can bear the same weight as a mountain of ‘not innocent’.

We should all take a moment, every day in fact, and remind ourselves, especially before we jump to judging others, that if you ignore the degrees & dimensions of the guilty … none of us are innocent.

But, most importantly, once you accept no one is innocent <self included> what truly matters is how one chooses to bear that weight.

“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.”

–

James B. Cabell

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Well. When entertaining <as if I actually entertain> my favorite drinking glasses are my ottimista pessimista glasses. Italian glasses with a line etched in the middle with ottimista above and pessimista above.

Why? Nothing seems to generate a more lively discussion than one on optimism versus pessimism. Simplistically. most people like to bucket other people into one group or another. Yeah. It is actually a version societal ‘lableing.’ I, a self proclaimed “cynical optimist’ tends to believe there are not many true Eeeyores <pessimists> and not many true Tiggers <optimists> in the world. I tend to believe we have both aspects interwoven and sometimes even situational <albeit our individual personality will skew us toward one or the other>. This combination is a good thing per research:

– according to research from the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program at the University of Pennsylvania, optimistic managers may do a better job of helping employees reach goals and be more productive. In a cross-sectional study of 86 employees and 17 managers at an Information Technology (IT) organization, researchers Margaret Greenberg and Dana Arakawa found that positive leadership correlated with employee optimism, engagement and project performance.

– a German study stated that optimistic people actually face a greater risk of disability or death within 10 years than pessimists who underestimate their future life satisfaction. The reasoning behind this is that the pessimists might actually be a bit more careful about their future than the optimists.

So if we have both we can actually increase productivity AND avoid “disability or death.” Well. That sees like a good combination. The challenge is to have a mix of both while keeping your eye on the realistic ball.

Oops. No can do.

We are individuals and each individual will see reality thru their own optimist or pessimist lens and, even more importantly, judge others thru this lens>. Therefore as we view each other we see a certain characteristic as ‘bad’ or maybe just an unrealistic point of view <by the way, this ‘bad’ can be either optimism OR pessimism>.

Neither optimistic nor pessimistic is bad in and of itself. An article in Psychology Today said:

“It’s simply not the case that optimism is “good” and pessimism is “bad”—although that’s how we’ve been encouraged to think about them. Rather, both are functional. And both have value.”

Interestingly … I often find that this is a discussion seems to take place between conservatives and liberals. Or risk averse and risk taking <which actually align with the political labels>. Ah. The conservative mind. In a 1956 essay “On Being Conservative”, the philosopher Michael Oakeshott wrote that someone with a ‘conservative temperament’ is:

—–

“not in love with what is dangerous and difficult; he is unadventurous; he has no impulse to sail uncharted seas. What others plausibly identify as timidity, he recognizes in himself as rational prudence. He eyes the situation in terms of its propensity to disrupt the familiarity of the features of his world”.

——–

Well.

I am not sure I would go as far as our friend Mr. Oakeshott goes. But. It certainly explains the reluctance among many sane people to take the more radical actions necessary to make radical changes <even when they know they should be done>.

Regardless. If you use only one perception filter, optimism and pessimism both have major flaws.

In problem solving an optimist is at least likely to come up with a number <and variety> of different things to try <maybe one of the will work> … while a pessimist is more likely to noodle over what is wrong, what could go wrong and why in the world we are even facing something wrong … and do nothing <which pretty much almost never works>.

As a generalization this would suggest in survival situations an optimist is more likely to survive.

<please note: I am ALL for survival>

On the other hand. Optimists can be nerve wracking to be around.

They tend to always talk best case and then buy their own hype.And when something does go wrong they inevitably blame the ones who pointed out what could go wrong with their plan <because ‘THEIR stupid, rosy-eyed idea didn’t fucking work’ is how one online writer suggested>.

Unfortunately every positive thought does NOT propel you in the right direction. Misguided optimism is as bad as overcautious pessimism.

Now.

I am hesitant to suggest balance as the key because actually achieving balance is … well … something called “inertia.”

Or.

Stagnation.

Or.

Doing nothing.

At least the optimists move. Because not moving and just wringing your hands means you will never discover something whether you may have expected to find nothing.

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“You can discover something in something where you expected to find nothing.”

Regina Derieva <The Last Island>

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The pessimist doesn’t even have the opportunity to find something.

Lastly. A ‘realist.’ <as an option to being optimistic or pessimistic>. This realist label is pretty popular. Most people suggest being a ‘realist’ is all about someone downplaying the good things <minimizing the highs> and recognizing some bad things as inevitable <minimizing the lows>.

Well. Unfortunately this is not true.

A true realist is someone who makes completely unbiased judgments and who doesn’t see things through any kind of filter. Neither a positive nor a negative one. Unfortunately this means that no one can actually be a realist. Sorry about that. Psychology points out that completely an unbiased perspective is neither possible nor actually productive <most of the time>. In addition … when someone says ‘they only look at the facts … with no emotion’ … well … they <too> are lying.

First.

Two people are likely to feel very differently about the same event simply because they highlight different pieces of the available information <some call these pieces ‘facts’>.

Second.

Even if truly ‘dispassionate’ … someone with a positive mindset will concentrate on other aspects of a situation than someone with a negative mindset.

Third.

Neither of them are necessarily in the wrong.

Anyway.

Here is one thing I do know. There is something really exhausting about reality. What do I mean? Even the most positive optimistic person will inevitably be challenged <if not eventually ground down>. It is a researched factoid that positive beliefs are derived not from the total number of good experiences but from a low ratio of bad versus good experiences.

Whew. That can be exhausting. So. All that said. What do you do about being optimistic or pessimistic?

Well.

In 1949 Harry F Harlow, Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin, outlined an alternative … something he called ‘intrinsic motivation.’ In other words, the joy of the task itself. Another guy, Daniel Pink, discusses this idea all the time and suggests that for most complex tasks intrinsic motivation is a much more powerful drive than any external motivator and that a key part of this motivator is purpose.

“The most highly motivated people, not to mention those who are most productive and satisfied, hitch their drives to a cause larger than themselves.”

In other words, economic incentives alone do not cause individuals to perform complex tasks better <nor make them more optimistic or pessimistic>. So maybe it is the journey that matters the most.

Maybe it has nothing to do with being optimistic or pessimistic.

Maybe all that really matters is doing something with purpose – not an ‘end game.’ Therefore … what this means is you are not optimistic nor pessimistic, but rather simply a person with a purpose.

Anyway.

Here is what I really know for sure:

————

“All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get.”

Confucius

———–

I always keep that in mind because optimism and positive outcomes really aren’t easy things to do and attain. And bad things happen. Keeping that in mind not only keeps me from being an Eeyore <or pessimistic with regard to Life and the world> it also probably keep me from slitting my wrists <figuratively>. As well as keep me from chugging whatever alcohol someone puts in my ottimista and pessimista glasses and wondering what my Purpose is.